Modern-day medical (software) applications, i.e. application programs, generally have a great number of functions which permit a user to display, process and diagnose medical image data. For each function, or at least for each related group of functions, a specific user interface (UI) is usually defined comprising associated control elements such as e.g. buttons, text fields, key and/or mouse combinations, layouts, etc. which are intended to enable the function or function group to be used in as optimal a manner as possible. In the course of establishing clinical findings it is mostly the case here that a plurality of functions or function groups will be used one after the other in order to lead the user, i.e. a physician making use of the application, to a diagnostic result. The “performance” of the application represents a measure of the quality of the user friendliness of the application, which performance in turn expresses itself in the number of medical image datasets which can be diagnosed by a user on the average per time unit by means of the application.
The performance of a medical engineering application is dependent in practice on a multiplicity of factors, inter alia also on the interaction of the (software) application with the hardware-related conditions of the client-server system on which the application is implemented, as well as on the preferred method of working and the know-how of the individual users working with the application.
Many of these factors accordingly depend on the specific operating conditions of a medical application at the particular site of deployment and a priori can consequently be predicted and taken into account only to a limited extent during the development of the application. The performance actually achieved during the operation of a medical application is therefore often comparatively far removed from the attainable optimum. In view of the complexity of a state-of-the-art medical application it is on the other hand frequently not possible or only possible to a limited extent to tailor such an application individually to the particular deployment conditions on the grounds of the additional time, cost and effort associated therewith.